List $24.95

Written by Khidhir Hamza with Jeff Stein - Audio book narrated by Robert Whitfield - Unabridged Nonfiction - 1 MP3 COMPACT DISC

Publisher, Blackstone Audiobooks (December 2002)

ALERT! YOUR CD PLAYER MUST BE MP3 COMPATIBLE! MP3 audiobooks on compact disc can be played on newer CD players that support MP3 technology and accept a 4.75" diameter disc, and on any personal computer that has Microsoft's Media Player or similar software.

Hamza, the Iraqi scientist who designed Baghdad's nuclear bomb, tells how he secretly developed the bomb with the cynical help of U.S., French, German, and British suppliers and experts and kept it hidden from U.N. inspectors after the Gulf War.

In 1994, after twenty years developing Iraq's atomic weapon, Dr. Khidhir Hamza made a daring escape to warn the CIA of Saddam's nuclear ambitions—only to be ridiculed and turned away. After a harrowing journey across three continents with Iraqi agents on his trail, Hamza finally came in from the cold at the U.S. embassy in Hungary. Now he tells a frightening story that U.S. officials have finally come to believe: that today, Saddam Hussein is only months away from making a workable bomb and has every intention of using it.

Dr. Hamza also presents a startling, unprecedented portrait of Saddam himself, his drunken rages, his women, his fear of germs, and his cold-blooded murder of underlings. A former resident of the presidential palace, Hamza is the only defector who has lived to write a firsthand, intimate portrait of the Iraqi inner circle, its spies and hit men, and their brutal chief.

Saddam's Bombmaker is also a saga of one man's journey through the circles of hell. Educated at MIT and Florida State University, dedicated to a life of peaceful teaching in America, Dr. Hamza relates how the regime ordered him home, seduced him into a pampered life as an atomic energy official, and forced him to design a bomb. The price of refusal was torture. The tale of his escape, his first bungled contact with CIA agents, and his flight abroad will keep readers riveted toward a climax worthy of a well crafted spy thriller.